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November 17, 2004

Andrew Sullivan Watch: Flat Tax Is Like Gay Marriage

Which, of course, means it's totally awesome, and, I imagine, that if you don't support it you're like the anti-miscegenation racists of the 50's:

The political principle is equally simple: government should, as far as possible, treat all its citizens equally. Politicians often talk about equality, but they seldom live up to its core meaning. A true egalitarian doesn't believe in affirmative action, because it means the government discriminates on the basis of race. A real believer in equality opposes heterosexual-exclusive civil marriage, because it means the government discriminates on the basis of emotional/sexual orientation. And such a liberal also opposes punitive or "progressive" taxation, because it means the government discriminates on the basis of personal success.

Gay marriage-- is there anything it can't do?

I think he's in full scurry-back-the-right mode now. That bandwidth fund of his must be just about depleted.

Thanks to JimB.

posted by Ace at 01:27 PM

Comments

"government discriminates on the basis of emotional/sexual orientation"

Emotional orientation?

What the hell is next, I ask?

I thought the only place where discrimination based on emotional orientation didn't occur was the government (i.e., postal workers).

Posted by: Nicholas Kronos on November 17, 2004 01:32 PM

Ace, that entire post was gob-smackingly vile.

Posted by: Josh Martin on November 17, 2004 01:47 PM

Not that you're one to easily take offense, God knows.

Posted by: ace on November 17, 2004 01:49 PM

I'm still waiting for the AS post on how gay marriage is JUST LIKE the grand unified theory.

Posted by: hobgoblin on November 17, 2004 02:24 PM

Ace... I am not sure what my emotional orientation is. I am having a crisis, and emotional identity crisis. Call the hospital and see if the bed in the ward next to Vincent is available.

Posted by: Jennifer on November 17, 2004 02:35 PM

Told you he would =p.

I personally have no interest in him. Let him flog another group of people as homophobes.

Posted by: Elric on November 17, 2004 02:36 PM

The sad thing is that the scurrying will work (you're 100% right, I think; nothing else explains his vigorous attacks on the attitude that gay marriage bans were the driving force behind Bush's reelection). Even I, who grew to detest Sullivan over the last 9 months or so, was genuinely heartened by his performance on Maher (and I don't mean the buttocks fondling). Seeing someone dress down Bill Maher for treating Chomsky "like a folk hero" felt damn good no matter who was doing it.

But not to fear. If ever I feel moved to hit his tip jar, I'll just hit yours instead.

Posted by: Il Padrino on November 17, 2004 02:50 PM

So when is Andrew just gonna come out as a full on Libertarian? If he joined that party he could be safe in accusing both of the major parties of homophobia, racism, elitism, communism, or anything else he dreamt up, all without the inconvenience of having to make any kind of ideological compromise at all. He could be forever safe in the womb of cynicism and abstraction.

Posted by: The Apologist on November 17, 2004 02:52 PM

Here's my favorite recent backpedal by Sulli:

"I don't believe that we should give up or change the fight for marriage equality. But I do think it behooves people like me to listen to what the other side is saying. I'm struck by how many of you have told me that your real objection is not with the issue of marriage equality itself, but by the means of achieving it. Court-imposed mandates rub people the wrong way, even those who support including gay couples within the family structure. Extra-legal tactics like Gavin Newsom's particularly rankle. I wasn't sanguine about this at the time but minimized it because I was so swept up in the emotion of seeing gay couples finally getting the respect they deserve. I should have been stricter in opposing Newsom's grandstanding. I'll have more to say in a forthcoming TNR piece. But it's important to hear what others who disagree with me are saying. I'm trying harder."

Well, it's good to see that I'm no longer necessarily a "bigot" or "homophobe" because I oppose government-sanctioned gay marriage. Well, at least not until the gay marriage issue comes to the forefront again, right Andrew?

Posted by: Mike on November 17, 2004 02:59 PM

"On a personal note: this blog saw an explosion of traffic last month, like many others. It will subside, I expect, after the election. But it's great to have so many new readers - close to 100,000 a day. It would be a bandwidth nightmare if we didn't also have the white knight of Henry Copeland's Blogads. Again, the ads have retreated after a bumper election month. But they're still there. And the income has made it possible for me to keep on blogging."

Uh, so what are the pledge drives for?

Posted by: aaron on November 17, 2004 03:24 PM

Right on. Sullivan is scrambling to the right before he loses his "I'm the gay conservative columnist" appeal.

Look for him to mention same sex marriage less and conservative fiscal policy more.

Then, after he figures most have forgotten his squealing during the campaigns, he'll start sounding hawkish on Iraq again.

Posted by: Gleeful Extremist on November 17, 2004 03:49 PM

By the way, has Instapundit, who blows anyone's bandwidth away, ever, ever complained about hosting costs? Ever?

Posted by: Elric on November 17, 2004 04:14 PM

Does this mean that if I support a "national sales tax", I am an evil, red-state voting, homophobic rube?

'Cause I am....I just want to know if the NST is the causal effect, or simply a symptom.

Posted by: Senator PhilABuster on November 17, 2004 04:35 PM

Not that I'd look to Sully for any sort of consistency anyway, but wouldn't the only tax that doesn't discriminate on the basis of personal success be a poll tax? Even with a flat tax, those who earn more pay more.

Posted by: cthulhu on November 17, 2004 04:40 PM

"A real believer in equality opposes heterosexual-exclusive civil marriage"

Apparently there were no real believers in equality prior to sometime in the last 3-5 years.

MLK: not a real believer in equality, for example.

Mike,

Right. Now you're only bigot if you don't vote for somebody who thinks that every human society in history has defined marriage in a way that is (and has always been, we just started NOTICING the problem 3-5 years ago) fundamentally unjust.

Posted by: DTLV on November 17, 2004 04:53 PM

OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD. OCD.

Posted by: jeff on November 17, 2004 08:01 PM

Sully is re-branding, yet again? Sheesh, he's a real can of Cheez Whiz.

Posted by: ransom on November 18, 2004 01:41 AM

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Top Headlines

TJM definitively ranks the films of Alfred Hitchcock

@KFILE 21m

Politico is reporting that multiple people have abruptly resigned from Eric Swalwell's gubernatorial campaign: "Members of senior leadership have departed the campaign, including Courtni Pugh, a strategic adviser who served as Swalwell's top liaison to organized labor groups."

So the campaign is collapsing due to the truth of the sexual harassment allegations.
That hissing sound you hear is the air going out of the Swalwell campaign. UPDATE: No it wasn't, it was just Swalwell one-cheek-sneaking out a fart on camera
Eric Swalwell more like Eric Farewell amirite
thanks to weft-cut loop.

This is the dumbest AI bullslop I've seen in a while: the CIA can use "quantum magnetometry" to track an individual man's heartbeat from twelve miles away
I wouldn't click on it, it's not interesting, it's just stupid clickslop. I just want to share my annoyance with you.

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Classic Rock Mystery Click
This is super-obscure and I only barely remember it. Given that, I'll give you the hint that it's by the Red Rocker.
And I guess you think you've got it made
Oh, but then, you never were afraid
Of anything that you've left behind
Oh, but it's alright with me now
'Cause I'll get back up somehow
And with a little luck, yes, I'm bound to win
Now twenty people will tell me it's not obscure, it was huge in their hometown and played at their prom. That's how it usually goes. When I linked Donnie Iris's "Love is Like a Rock," everyone said they knew that one and that his other song (which I didn't know at all) Ah Leah! was huge in their area.

Sarah Longwell spotting

Tuq'r's makeover is 100!

Alfred Hitchcock learns to talk with TJM

Ryan Long goes to the No Kings rally to pick up young liberal hotties and is greatly disappointed in the quality of the mish
thanks to stevey

You know we "joke" about the GOPe just "conserving" leftist things?
David French just posted:

Populists ask what conservativism has ever conserved?
Well its about to conserve birthright citizenship!
Posted by: 18-1

I couldn't hate this queen of the cuck-chair more if it paid seven figures and came with a corner office.

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In more marketing for Project Hail Mary, scientists say they've found the biosigns indicating life growing on an alien planet. It's not proof, just signatures of chemicals that are produced by biological metabolism, and it could be nothing, but scientists think it's a strong sign that this planet is inhabited by something.

In a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, a team of scientists announced the detection of dimethyl sulfide (along with a similar detection of dimethyl disulfide) in the atmosphere of an exoplanet called K2-18b. This is actually the second detection of dimethyl sulfide made on this planet, following a tentative detection in 2023.
Tons of chemicals are detected in the atmospheres of celestial objects every day. But dimethyl sulfide is different, because on Earth, it's only produced by living organisms.
"It is a shock to the system," Nikku Madhusudhan, first author on the paper, told the New York Times. "We spent an enormous amount of time just trying to get rid of the signal."

He means they tried to prove the signal was caused by things other than dimethyl sulfide but they could not.

Artemis moon shot a go, scheduled for 6:24 Eastern time tonight
Great marketing arranged by Amazon to promote Project Hail Mary. Okay not really but it does work out that way.

TJM talks John Boorman, director of Excalibur

Good rickroll

What? Skeleton of the most famous Musketeer, D'Artagnan, possibly discovered in Dutch church closet.
Dumas picked four names of real musketeers out of a history book, D'Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. So there was an actual D'Artagnan, though he made most of the story up. (Or, you know, all of it.)*

Charles de Batz de Castelmore, known as d'Artagnan, the famous musketeer of Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV, spent his life in the service of the French crown.
The Gascon nobleman inspired Alexandre Dumas's hero in "The Three Musketeers" in the 19th century, a character now known worldwide thanks to the novel and numerous film adaptations.
D'Artagnan was killed during the siege of Maastricht in 1673, and there is a statue honoring the musketeer in the city. His final resting place has remained a mystery ever since.

A lot of Dumas's stories are based on bits of real history. The plot of the >Three Musketeers, about trying to recover lost diamonds from the queen's necklace, was cribbed from the then-almost-contemporaneous Affair of the Queen's Necklace. And the Man in the Iron Mask is based on real accounts of a prisoner forced to wear a mask (though I think it was a velvet mask).
* Oh, I should mention, Dumas says all this, about finding the names in an old book, in the prologue to his novel. But authors lie a lot. They frequently present fictions as based on historic fact. The twist is, he was actually telling the truth here. At least about these four musketeers having actually existed and served under Louis XIV.
Fun fact: You know the beginning of A Fistful of Dollars where the local gunslingers make fun of Clint Eastwood's donkey and Eastwood demands they apologize to the donkey? That's lifted from The Three Musketeers. Rochefort mocks D'Artagnan's old, brokedown farm horse and D'Artagnan is incensed.

A commenter asked which should be read first, The Hobbit of LOTR?
Easy, no question -- read The Hobbit first. It's actually the start of the story and comes first chronologically. It sets up some major characters and major pieces in play in LOTR.
Also, the Hobbit is Beginner-Friendly, which LOTR isn't. The Hobbit really is a delightful book, and a fast read. It's chatty, it's casual, it's exciting, and it's funny. In that dry cheeky British humor way. I love that the narrator is constantly making little asides and commentary, like he's just sitting next to you telling you this story as it occurs to him.
LOTR is a very long story. Fifteen hundred pages or so. The Hobbit is relatively short and very punchy and easy to read. If you don't like The Hobbit, you can skip out on LOTR. If you do like it, you'll be primed to read LOTR.
Oh, I should say: The Hobbit is written as if it's for children, but one of those smart children's stories that are also for adults. Don't worry, there's also real fighting and violence and horror in it, too.
LOTR is written for adults. (It's said that Tolkien wrote both for his children, but LOTR was written 17 years later, when his children were adults.) Some might not like The Hobbit due to its sometimes frivolous tone. Me, I love it. I find it constantly amusing. Both are really good but there is a starkly different tone to both. LOTR is epic, grand, and serious, about a world war, The Hobbit is light and breezy, and about a heist. Though a heist that culminates in a war for the spoils.